It was really about the Get, of course.

Anything to seize what she desired.

He stretched and reflected on the plan he’d just put into place. It’d gone quite well.

Forty minutes earlier he’d carted a Monterey Bay Aquarium shopping bag along Cannery Row, then slipped behind a restaurant near the Bay View Center. He’d changed into his “uniform,” militia chic, he joked to himself—camo, bandanna, gloves, mask, boots. Then, ten minutes after the self-help author had started his reading, time for rampage.

He’d slipped out from the hiding spot and, firing his Glock, walked closer to the Bay View Center, aiming in the direction of people but not actually at them. Everyone scattered. Everyone screamed.

He made his way toward the center’s fire exit doors, shooting away. He figured he had about four minutes until police showed up.

Then, when people began leaping out the windows, falling onto the rocks and into the bay, he’d turned and slipped back to his staging area. He stripped the camo off and was soon once again in T-shirt, windbreaker, shorts and flip-flops, pistol hidden against his spine. The costume went into a mesh dive bag weighted down with rocks and he’d tossed it into the bay, sinking thirty feet into the kelp.

Then, newly touristed, March made his way along the shore to where the Honda was parked. On a prepaid he called 9-1-1 and reported the gunman had moved off—toward Fisherman’s Wharf, the opposite direction from where March now was. He then called a local TV station and said the same thing. Another call—to a Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant, not the one he’d eaten at last night, to report that a crazed gunman was approaching. “Run, run, get out!”

A lot of police—not everywhere, since this was a small community, but plenty of them. But not a single one paid any attention to him. Their focus was elsewhere. He’d wondered if they would make the connection that he’d masqueraded as the fire inspector, Dunn, to make sure that the exit doors were conveniently taped open. Probably not. The precautions the venue had taken had assured the success of the attack.

Thank you…

He’d waited for a while but then decided he could return to, yes, the scene of the crime.

The streets were congested, of course, as he made his way toward the venue where the tragedy continued to unfold. In the water, he could see, a dozen police and Coast Guard boats cruised and floated, blue lights, searchlights. Some people bobbing, mostly divers. People on the rocks too, beneath the shattered windows of the venue. Some sat, seemingly numb. Some lay on their backs or sides. Rescue workers had carefully descended along a steep line of rock, slick with vegetation like green hair and salt water, to get to the injured. Several had lost their footing and gone into the ocean. A fireman was one of these, flailing in the water as it lifted and dropped him against the shore. Two fellow workers pulled him to safety.